


pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow

by bookoftheazuresky



Category: Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha ViVid, Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha | Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha, Vivid Strike!
Genre: Bleeding Effect, Dissociation, Einhart and Sieglinde's magical genetics are awful, Gen, Mentions of Suicide, memory problems, not as dark as it sounds
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-07
Updated: 2018-09-07
Packaged: 2019-07-07 23:50:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,405
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15918741
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bookoftheazuresky/pseuds/bookoftheazuresky
Summary: She is Einhart Stratos, DSAA champion, student of Nove Nakajima, but today Klaus Ingvalt rides just below her skin.It is going to be a bad day.





	pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow

**Author's Note:**

> I know Vivid is a light-hearted series, but I wanted a look at what some of the consequences might be of having your Warring States era ancestor's memories in your head.
> 
> Title is from Macbeth.

Einhart wakes up with her sheets fisted in her hands, the fabric stretched so tight across her knuckles it creaks. For a moment, her pale ceiling is replaced by blocks of white stone, the bank of Mid-style windows with high, dark wooden frames in a style popular centuries ago. Then time reasserts itself, and she is back in her own apartment.

She lets out a long breath and focuses on relaxing every muscle in her fingers. The creased fabric slides free gradually, then lies innocently on the bed. Her spartan room usually helps ground her- she is not in Klaus’ castle, all pale and polished stone softened by banners and rugs. Her furniture looks nothing like the heavy wood he favored, and the room is arranged to clear the space for indoor practice. It’s a measure Klaus had never had to take- the Ingvalt castle provided its own rooms if its prince wished to practice inside.

Despite these things, her ancestor’s thoughts cling like a ghost. She is Einhart Stratos, DSAA champion, student of Nove Nakajima, but today Klaus Ingvalt rides just below her skin.

It is going to be a bad day.

~

Fuuka blinks at her when she says they will be running an alternate route this morning, but her student is perfectly willing. That’s good, because the towering buildings of Central Cranagan are making her- Klaus- antsy, familiar territory gone strange, her memories and his conflicting. Better to escape their shadows as quickly as she can, get out into the open.

Einhart pushes a little faster today to keep talking to a minimum. Her student seems to catch her mood, obediently taking up the demonstrated stances with little more prompting than Einhart’s glance. The Hegemon style is perfectly easy and steady, centered: only natural, as she and Klaus both live it. But there’s little help in it either- she may be more settled, but her head and heart are still too many years in the past.

It’s pure irony that in all the ways her life has improved, _this_ has only become worse. When she was younger, the line between her and her ancestor never seemed important- Klaus lived for days at a time in her body, helping to engrave the Hegemon style into her reflexes. She progressed as he did, lessons learned in an era long past as crisp as if she’d practiced them herself that morning. Klaus was young and determined and fresh as snowdrops, easy to be.

But the older she became, the more she used her adult form, the more his _later_ impinged on her life. Her family had records of those who awakened to Klaus’ life, and their progress was always similar. A child was safe- the simplicity of their developing brain protected them from Klaus’ adult memories. As she grew, however, Klaus’ life unfolded parallel to hers- and he had died so very young. Her adult mode only sped up the process of their synchronization, the last years of his life bleeding through even earlier than they normally would, given her level of development.

She’d spoken with Sieglinde, whose situation was both worse and better than her own. The champion might have far more recollections engraved in her body than Einhart did, but the memories were battlefields stripped of context. The lives of those Jeremiahs outside the field were closed to her- lost love and failure did not haunt Sieglinde. Even so, a darker specter loomed over both of them. Suicide was a common risk factor they both shared. The last of Einhart’s family to share Klaus’ memories had imitated their ancestor in the most final of ways, decades before she was even born. As Sieg’s mother had escaped the legacy of the Jeremiahs, soon after the birth of her daughter.

Today, though, does not seem to be one of the worst days, when Einhart can hardly think past the gaping canyon of Olivie’s loss. She is just…restless.

“Um, Haru-san…?” Fuuka ventures. She is holding her stance steady, but a slight tremble has infiltrated her thighs and arms.

“That’s enough,” Einhart confirms, both annoyed and resigned at her own distraction. She resolves to ask Nove or one of her teammates to handle Fuuka this afternoon. At best, she’ll be fighting too seriously against a beginner if she tries to spar with Fuuka like this, as she overlaps the girl with one of Klaus’ old sparring partners. At worst…

Well, the day she can easily identify as worst of her bleedthrough had put her in Klaus’ last battle against Olivie- while she’d been in the ring sparring against Vivio. Nove had ended up giving Einhart a concussion to keep her down. They had also ended up having a much more detailed conversation about Klaus’ memories after that, but the fright she’d given everyone, including herself…no, better to not expose Fuuka to that.

“Let’s head back,” she says to the flushed girl.

“Yes!” Fuuka replies briskly.

~

She catches herself writing in Belkan script halfway through her grammar notes, when Yumi does a double take looking over. At least it isn’t her homework again- one memorable time, she’d gotten a note back from a teacher saying “my partner says this is the correct answer, but maybe try writing it in a language I can read?”

“Bad day?” Yumi asks at lunch, cutting her fruit into neat quarters.

Einhart mixes the nutritional powder she had brought from home with a pint of milk. She’s not hungry- she’s got too much mana in her blood right now for her body to feel anything but keyed up. But both Einhart and Klaus know better than to go without food, no matter their nerves or pain or headspace. And Lenneth would kill her if she did, Einhart thinks.

It takes a moment to remember that her trainer is named Nove, who is red-haired and yellow eyed and not at all like the silver-haired phantom that her brain is insisting is training her in combat. The stupid thing is that Lenneth, in the most technical sense, did train her, no matter that the woman is dust on a planet that no longer draws breath. The loss abruptly knifes into her lungs, a ghost mourning a ghost.

“…yes,” Einhart belatedly answers, then forces the nutritional shake past the lump in her throat.

~

Looking at Vivio like this is like looking at the sun, and it’s the most unfair, terrible thing Einhart has done in all of her short life. Because Klaus loves Olivie, and that feeling is still alive despite everything. Despite Klaus’ attempts to box it up and set it aside after the Cradle rose. Despite the daughter that was not Olivie’s and who didn’t even turn five before Klaus burdened her with the title of Hegemon. Despite all the years and worlds between Klaus and Einhart, if there is _anything_ that could be said to be between Klaus and Einhart.

So Einhart looks at Vivio, and her veins sing with sunlight. It’s the most perfectly natural, beautiful thing that she’s ever felt, the memory of the short summer of Klaus and Olivie’s love. It’s also the worst thing, because Takamachi Vivio and Olivie Sagebrecht are different people; and it is bitterly unfair, to both Einhart and Vivio, for her to feel this way.

She says a few stumbling words to Nove and they must make sense because the woman briskly settles Fuuka with Corona and Vivio to practice counterstrikes and sends Rio to spot Einhart on the weights. The great thing about Rio is that while she can talk a mile a minute, her long training has given her a deep patience. Einhart relaxes into it and focuses just on the precise motions of each lift, just the movement of her body. She finishes the routine and wipes her face with a towel, and she and Rio switch places.

Rio’s strength and precision are always an inspiration to watch. Her lifts are effortless, exactly the same each time. Einhart falls into the rhythm of it, almost as comforting as her own work.

“Good work, Wilfried,” she says absently as she fits the bar back into place at the end.

There’s a moment of silence, then she hears, “Uh, Einhart-san?”

She looks up, and the green eyes throw her off for a moment. “Sorry.” She stops there, because the girl’s name flutters out of her reach. She asks, as generally as she can, “How do you think training is going?”

The girl- not Wilfried- brightens. “Fuuka-san’s doing pretty good! Nove-san’s going to start upping her conditioning this week. I suggested some of the stuff my dad used when he taught me, since I think Fuuka-san would do well if we included some flexibility exercises…” She continued chattering about the recruit’s training, comparing it to what was the norm in her own family. Einhart listened without understanding, letting the strange names wash over her as they picked up hand-weights. All the girl needed from her was a few affirmative or neutral noises in pauses in her narrative. It was always nice to hear about the lives of the recruits in training, even if she didn’t know them personally. Apparently, a rivalry had sprung up between a new recruit and a veteran, and there was some sort of bet around a match the two might fight.

“Girls?” a strange-familiar voice asks from the doorway. Einhart blinks, then blinks again, and the woman resolves into Nove. “It’s about time to finish up.”

“Okay,” the girl- Rio!- carols. Einhart clenches her hands and nods in some semblance of calm. The snap back to the present day leaves her feeling unmoored and dazed. She automatically tracks Rio bouncing around Nove in the doorway, saying something to their coach, but none of it registers.

Nove moves, deliberate, and puts a hand on Einhart’s shoulder. It settles her a little. “Are you okay? Do you need anything?”

Einhart shuts her eyes and shakes her head. “I just need to go home.” She adds, though it is like pushing through Corona’s Rock Bind on pure muscle strength alone, “Without seeing Vivio-san.”

Nove nods decisively. “Don’t worry about cleanup, then. Take a quick shower. I’ll keep them until you’re done and headed out.”

With that in mind, Einhart doesn’t bother with more than a rinse and a change of clothes. Her hair hangs damply against the back of her neck when she waves a goodbye to Yumi at the front desk and walks out into the gathering dusk.

Teo curls on her shoulder as they sit on the bus, butting his head against her neck. She picks him up instead, petting his furred back like he was the leopard kitten he resembled. His coat feels different to her hands than a real cub, too slick and synthetic, though still soft. He chirps at her, rubbing his dark-marked head against her calloused hands. At least she doesn’t have to worry that he’ll chew her- Klaus bore such marks on his fingers and wrists from untrained cats.

“Oh, Teo,” she sighs. Teo rubs his cheek against her palm, but does not answer.

~

Einhart paces her room, her body undesiring of rest. Or rather, _Klaus_ paces her room, restless as a Shutran leopard after nightfall. To him, battle is on the horizon and he is chained by the bonds of alliance and duty. She wishes, absurdly and futilely, for the fights she had picked before she became Nove’s student, the best method she had ever found to help these episodes. She could, she acknowledges, follow Fuuka’s example and go back to it. Some part of her delights at the possibility, the rush of fighting free of all rules, pure combat.

Klaus shoves the thought aside, annoyed with himself for thinking something so irresponsible. It was beneath a knight’s dignity to beat the unskilled except in self-defense. This pacing is doing nothing, he decides. Better to run. He knows his own endurance, and a single night without sleep will not leave him reeling.

He disdains a coat but retrieves a pair of combat gloves to shove in a pocket and opens a window to vault out. A neat landing, and he is off. The trees here are cultivated and mannerly things, not the pine forests that Cro loved, so he has no fear of running into a branch even in the uncertain light of the three moons.

He runs for some time, avoiding the paved throughways bordering and inside the preserve. For a while he follows the bed of a small stream, jumping from bank to bank whenever a stone allows him to cross easily. Klaus can read the marks of coming autumn in the leaves, but it is early yet, and the air is still warm even after dark.

It’s not until a fine shiver of incipient exhaustion passes through his body that he slows and starts to circle back. There is constructive activity and destructive activity, and to continue on in this vein would be the latter, not the former. Even so, by the time he returns then it is a struggle to enter the window he had left open.

Still, Klaus would have to be dead before he skimped on his cooldown exercises, making sure that he hadn’t damaged anything. That, or Lenneth would make him wish he was dead. By the time that was done, his body was demanding sleep loudly enough that his restlessness was entirely subsumed.

He throws himself onto the blankets and closes his eyes, letting darkness wash over him at last.

~

Einhart wakes up to soreness, flat on her face on top of her covers. For all that, it is a better awakening than she had yesterday.

“Teo?” Her Device lets up on his cheerful chirping at the evidence that his master is indeed in the land of the living once more. Einhart sits up gingerly, feeling her legs complain as she tightened her muscles.

She remembers…running, just giving over to the restlessness in her body until she could barely stand. The tide of memory has ebbed from her once more, leaving her simply Einhart Stratos, 14 years old, dressed in last night’s clothes with her hair still in the same braids.

She levers herself to her feet with a hard exhalation, reaching for the ties on her hair. Morning is morning, and if she wants to meet her student for their run, she must get ready.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [raze out the written troubles of the brain](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18093326) by [bookoftheazuresky](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bookoftheazuresky/pseuds/bookoftheazuresky)




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